


Sound the Bells

by bedlamsbard



Series: Ouroboros [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Friends With Benefits, Gen, Missing Scene, background time travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-05
Updated: 2014-11-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 22:38:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2405450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bedlamsbard/pseuds/bedlamsbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the run for weeks, Jedi Knight Quinlan Vos finally stumbles back behind Republic lines, where he finds a grief-stricken Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi Order reeling from the devastating losses of the Clone Wars, and an entirely unexpected new enemy.  An Ouroboros story set during the missing two months of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1080760">Wake the Storm</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place during the missing two months of the Clone Wars timeline of Wake the Storm, about two weeks before the end of Wake. It will make substantially less sense (not least for the "wait, what's Darth Vader doing in the Clone Wars?" factor) without having read Wake the Storm first.
> 
> Rather than pull Quinlan Vos's story line wholesale from the comics (since it doesn't work very well in the context of the television show and also isn't what I wanted here), I'm working off a backstory that diverges after Republic/Clone Wars #49, "Sacrifice" and assumes Quin's been undercover on the Wheel for most of the war.
> 
> This story takes place after S5 of The Clone Wars and does not incorporate material from The Lost Missions or Star Wars Rebels.

Rain soaked through the hood of Quinlan’s stolen cloak as he crouched on top of the pier nearest the GAR camp, peering through the night gloom as he tried to make out the battalion designations on the tents and equipment. It didn’t really matter who was in charge as long as it was another Jedi, but if it was someone he knew this would go faster.

From what he could tell, there didn’t seem to be enough clones in the camp to account for the two battalion numbers he had so far identified, which meant that either the rest of them were somewhere else or some of the equipment had been borrowed from another battalion. Wearily, Quinlan racked his brain as he tried to remember who was commanding either the 212th or the 501st; he didn’t know all, or even most, of the battalions in the GAR, but both those numbers sounded vaguely familiar.

_Kenobi and Skywalker_ , Quinlan realized after a moment, feeling relief spread through him. If Obi-Wan and Anakin were still in command of their respective battalions, then this would go a lot faster. And Obi-Wan was on the Council; that would speed things up even more.

Bracing himself, he dropped off the edge of the pier into the dark water below. The shock made him gasp; the seas in this part of Telerath were relatively warm, comparatively speaking, but that didn’t make this any more pleasant. Surfacing to take a breath of the marine-scented air, Quinlan cut out across the bay towards the camp, feeling the weight of his water-logged cloak and heavy boots threaten to drag him down. It wasn’t far; even in his exhausted state Quinlan reached the opposite side of the bay within a few minutes, catching himself against the base of a pier. The metal was slippery beneath his fingers, coated in streaks of grayish-blue algae that climbed up to the dock above him. Quinlan listened for the tread of the clone troopers on guard duty, hearing the rain bounce off their armor, and reached tentatively out through the Force with a slight touch of mental persuasion. He heard the clone troopers turn away, continuing on their patrol.

Quinlan hauled himself dripping out of the water and over the side of the pier, finally glad for the rain, since the already soaked docks wouldn’t betray his presence with suspicious wet spots. Keeping an eye out for more patrols, he ran across the dock towards the dubious shelter of the nearest tent. It was late, well into the planet’s night cycle, and none of the tents were illuminated, the Force telling him that their occupants were all deep in slumber. Quinlan darted from one tent to another, making his way inwards towards the center of the camp where the commanders’ quarters would be.

There was no visible difference between this tent and the others – it was a little smaller, since it had been designed for a single occupant, or maybe a pair of occupants, rather than a squadron of clone troopers, but Quinlan had the vague memory from his heretofore unused training in the inner workings of the GAR that command meetings were probably held in there as well, which accounted for the tent’s still-large size. Quinlan squinted at it, trying to make certain that it wasn’t just another clone tent, and found himself wishing that the Jedi were suicidal enough to just tack their symbol onto the side of the blasted thing, which currently boasted the GAR spoked wheel instead. After a moment, he recognized the Force presence inside, which at least pretty unequivocally identified whose tent it was.

Quinlan had to wait for another clone trooper patrol to pass before he could cross to the tent, ducking quickly inside into blessed warmth from the portable heater in the corner. He barely had a moment to appreciate it.

The Force grabbed him by the throat, tossing him sideways. Quinlan hit the floor and rolled, shaking his concealed lightsaber out of his sleeve-holster into his hand as he came up on one knee. “Blast it, Obi-Wan, it’s me!”

Obi-Wan Kenobi’s familiar face was illuminated by the blue glow of his ignited lightsaber. He blinked at Quinlan over the blade. “Quin?”

Quinlan held up his hands so that Obi-Wan could see the lightsaber hilt, making no move to get to his feet. “Yeah, me.”

“You could have knocked.” Obi-Wan deactivated his lightsaber and set it aside, looking around with a distracted air before he waved his hand, lumas springing into life around the top of the tent.

Quinlan got to his feet, his knees protesting the motion, and returned his lightsaber to its holster. “Could have. Didn’t.”

“Are you being pursued?” Obi-Wan asked practically. “Do I need to wake up my men?”

“I don’t think so,” Quinlan said, looking around for somewhere to sit – preferably as near the heater as possible. Obi-Wan reached out and hooked a folding chair with one hand, pushing it towards him, and Quinlan collapsed into it gratefully. “I’ve been running for weeks – my cover got blown on the Wheel and I’ve been bouncing from system to system, but I don’t think the Seppies followed me here yet. Could have, though.”

Obi-Wan nodded, leaning down to pick up his comlink. “Cody, this is Kenobi,” he said after the sleepy response. “Get Rex up and double the patrols on our perimeter.” He glanced at Quinlan. “And send a medic over to my tent.”

“I don’t need –”

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow, and Quinlan subsided, muttering, “Fine, whatever makes mother hen Kenobi happy.”

“No, I’m fine,” Obi-Wan said into the comlink. “I’ve got company.” He clicked the comlink off and put it down. “You look awful,” he said to Quinlan.

“I could say the same for you,” Quinlan said; Obi-Wan looked like sixty miles of bad road, and there was a scar on his face that definitely hadn’t been there the last time Quinlan had seen him. “I’ve been running from Black Sun and Dooku’s thugs, what’s your excuse?”

Obi-Wan glanced aside. He sat down on the edge of his rumpled bed, pushing a hand back through his hair, and said, “Do you need me to call the Council? Or Tholme?”

“Yeah,” Quinlan said. He started to stretch, flinched, and said, “Yeah, as soon as possible. Get Skywalker in here, both of you should hear this.”

Obi-Wan froze.

Quinlan blinked at him. “He’s not here? He’s got the Five-Oh-First, right, I saw them outside –”

“Anakin’s dead.”

Quinlan stared at him, too surprised to respond immediately, because Skywalker had always seemed even more invulnerable than was usual for Jedi. But the grief on Obi-Wan’s face was too raw and too clear, all his usual defenses stripped away, and Quinlan thought, _sithspit, he’s not lying._

“Oh, stang, Obi-Wan, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know. I’ve been out of touch.”

Obi-Wan nodded, looking away.

“When?” Quinlan asked, gentling his voice. Surely the Council wouldn’t have sent Obi-Wan out again immediately after his partner had been killed. The Jedi were spread thin, but not, as far as Quinlan knew, _that_ thin.

“Six weeks ago.” Obi-Wan’s voice had gone dull. “We’re not – there was no body. We had to exfil before we could search the area. He could still – but I felt the backlash.” He rubbed his hands over his face. “Officially he’s listed as MIA, but I think the Council’s going to move him to the KIA list within the month. If Dooku had him, we’d know by now…”

He trailed off, pressing a hand to his forehead. Quinlan could feel his grief in the Force like an open wound, the burned-out places in the mind where the psychic backlash from his partner’s death had scorched the channels normally used to handle those parts of the Force. _He shouldn’t be on the battlefield. He should be back in the Temple with a consular putting what’s left of his mind back together._

Obi-Wan must have caught the thought, because he looked up and frowned at Quinlan. A moment later his shields slammed down hard enough to make Quinlan flinch back.

“I’m fine,” Obi-Wan said.

_Like hell you are_ , Quinlan was about to say, but the words were cut off by the arrival of Obi-Wan’s clone commander and a medic, both of whom eyed Quinlan suspiciously.

Obi-Wan rose to his feet. “Cody, you remember Master Vos? Quinlan, this is Commander Cody.”

The clone commander shot Quinlan a startled look. Quinlan stared back at him, eventually remembering him as if from a lifetime ago, long before he’d left Coruscant for the assignment whose cover had been blown to shreds four weeks earlier. “How’s it hanging, commander?” he said, raising his eyebrows, and saw Cody grin slowly as he recognized him.

“I’m Kix,” said the medic, coming over and looking disapprovingly at Quinlan’s soaking wet clothes. In contrast to the yellow markings on Cody’s armor, his had slashes of blue; Quinlan couldn’t remember what, if anything, that signified. The aurebesh letters tattooed onto his shaved head spelled out _the only good droid is a dead one_. “Where are you injured, sir?”

“I’m not,” Quinlan said, watching over his shoulder as Obi-Wan drew Cody aside to speak to him briefly. “Obi-Wan worries too much, that’s all.”

“I’m going to advise that you let me figure that out,” Kix said. “Get out of those wet clothes, at least. General –”

“We’re about the same size. I’ll get him a change of clothes,” Obi-Wan said, glancing over his shoulder at them. “Cody, can you get Admiral Yularen on the horn? We’re going to need to punch through a communique to Coruscant and I think we’ll need the boosted signal capacity on the star destroyers, since I’ve been having trouble getting through to the Core from planetside.” He looked at Quinlan again and explained, “It seems like Dooku’s got some sort of new signal-jamming device. I’ve heard rumors that some of the other Jedi have been problems too. Telerath isn’t so far distant that it could be natural.”

Kix moved back as Quinlan reached inside his shirt and pulled out the waterproof case he’d been carrying for weeks now. “Not a rumor,” he said, tossing it to Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan plucked it out of the air, flicking the case open with his thumb and pouring out the datacrystals into the palm of his hand. “This is all on the signal jamming?” he asked, returning them to the case.

“Nope,” Quinlan said. “Troop movements, ship plans, some other stuff – and there’s a holo in there on Dooku’s new general too.”

Obi-Wan’s head jerked up, both clone troopers swinging around to look at him. Quinlan felt the Force shiver, the temperature in the room dropping a few degrees. His voice soft and dangerous, Obi-Wan said, “Darth Vader? You’ve seen him?”

“ _You_ have?” Quinlan said, fighting back the urge to reach for his lightsaber, because in the Force Obi-Wan had just gone from _friend_ to _threat_.

Cody and Kix were watching Obi-Wan, their tension evident in the Force but almost swamped by Obi-Wan’s fury. Obi-Wan said, “He killed Anakin.”

_Oh, stang, Vos, you really put your foot in it this time._

“Is he coming here?” Obi-Wan went on, rolling his shoulders back as if preparing to fight Vader here and now. The subtext was clear: if Vader came within a light-year of them, Obi-Wan was going to lose whatever fragile hold he had on his own sanity and either hunt him down or die trying. Obi-Wan had a nasty vindictive streak that he had mostly managed to squelch by the time he’d been knighted, but it still came through on occasion, usually at the worst possible moment.

“I don’t know,” Quinlan said, shrugging and then wincing as the movement pulled at his abused muscles. “Maybe. Obi-Wan –”

Obi-Wan’s hands flexed, like he was thinking about ripping Vader’s heart – or whatever passed for one – out of his chest. Maybe he was; Quinlan wasn’t getting anything from him through the Force except ugly, vicious rage that was utterly out of character for a Jedi master. It blanked out everything else in the Force; Quinlan sometimes forgot just how strong Obi-Wan was, since Obi-Wan didn’t advertise it.

Cody’s comlink chirped, breaking the moment. Quinlan felt the coiled Force energy in the tent release, Obi-Wan letting out his breath as he leaned close to listen in on the message. After a moment he straightened up. “I’d better deal with this,” he told Quinlan. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. There are extra robes in there.” He pointed at a footlocker, then leaned over to put the datacrystal case down and pick up his lightsaber.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Quinlan said, finally starting to shrug off his cloak. He waited until Obi-Wan and Cody had gone before turning to Kix and saying, “How did Skywalker die?”

The clone trooper hesitated. This close, Quinlan could make out the battalion markings on his armor; he’d come from the 501st, from Skywalker’s battalion. Obi-Wan must have gotten the 501st transferred over to his command.

“There was an explosion,” Kix said at last. “We’re pretty sure that General Skywalker was at the epicenter; all the clones that got caught in the blast died.” He grimaced. “Anyone close by got killed by Darth Vader. General Kenobi and the 212th were still a few klicks off; they were close enough to see the explosion, but they couldn’t reach us in time for – well, we had a lot of casualties. More than sixty percent.”

Quinlan hissed through his teeth. He might not have been filling the usual role of a Jedi general in this war, but he could do basic math, and that was a hell of a lot of losses for a single battalion to take, especially if they’d been as depleted as most of the other Republic forces were. It was harder to replace fallen clones than it was battle droids.

Kix was still talking. “General Kenobi held off Vader while we got the wounded out, but more clankers had already shown up. We had to evacuate under heavy fire. There was no time to look for survivors, or for General Skywalker…” He trailed off. “Almost everyone was injured,” he finished awkwardly. “Even General Kenobi. The medics had to knock him out once we were back on _Resolute_ , and then he went AWOL on Coruscant for almost a day.”

Quinlan stared. “ _Obi-Wan_ went AWOL?”

Kix nodded. “The rumor is he was with Senator – with a senator he and General Skywalker know.”

Quinlan hadn’t realized Obi-Wan was fucking a senator, but he was so behind on Jedi gossip that Obi-Wan could have gotten married and he wouldn’t know about it.

Kix cleared his throat. “You really should get out of those wet things, General.”

_I’m not actually a general_ , Quinlan thought about pointing out, but it probably wouldn’t have any effect. He went back to shrugging out of his sodden clothes, listening to Kix click his tongue reprovingly when he saw the half-healed blaster burns on Quinlan’s right arm and across his back. “I thought you said you weren’t hurt.”

“This is just a scratch,” Quinlan said.

Kix gave him a dry look. “Jedi,” he snorted. “You’re as bad as General Kenobi.”

“Hey, there’s no need to be insulting,” Quinlan said, which startled the clone into a laugh.

After Kix had patched up the burns and a couple of other scrapes, he offered Quinlan a couple of pain tablets. Quinlan refused, since he wanted his head clear as possible, and went to find Obi-Wan’s spare robes while Kix packed up his medical kit. The robes on top were old and mended in several places, but clean and dry, which were all Quinlan cared about at this point. He left his boots to dry by the heater, picking up a datapad at random to look at. He didn’t know what he had been expecting, but it definitely hadn’t been a treatise on a theorized cache of Sith artifacts from the Mandalorian Wars.

He glanced up as Kix made to leave. “You know Obi-Wan’s probably going to get himself killed chasing Vader.”

“Everyone knows that,” Kix said, then saluted and left.

Quinlan sat down on the side of the cot to try and figure out why Obi-Wan had been reading about Sith artifacts, since that didn’t seem even remotely like a good thing. It wasn’t in Obi-Wan’s area of academic curiosity, at least as far as Quinlan knew.

He didn’t make it more than a few paragraphs in before he started to nod off, setting the datapad aside to lie down in the tangled mess of Obi-Wan’s sheets. They smelled a little like Obi-Wan, which made a nice change from the places Quinlan had been sleeping lately. He closed his eyes, just for a few moments…

He woke up again when Obi-Wan sat down beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Mmph?” he managed.

“I got through to the Temple,” Obi-Wan said. “Or to Mace, anyway. He’s rounding up enough other Council members for a quorum and they’ll call back. Tholme’s there too.”

“Good.” Quinlan sat up, blinking and rubbing at his eyes. “What happened? You got called away.”

“It’s not important.” At the look Quinlan gave him, Obi-Wan relented and said, “The Separatist forces on one of the outer island chains are moving, but they’re not an immediate threat to us. We’re tracking their movement.”

“Moving?” Quinlan repeated. “In this weather?”

“Battle droids don’t care much one way or another,” Obi-Wan said.

“You’d know better than me,” Quinlan admitted. He scrubbed his hands over his face again, trying to make himself wake up properly.

Obi-Wan leaned over him to pick something up off the folding table next to the cot and offer it to him. “Eat something. You’ll feel better.”

Quinlan took the bowl, bemused. “Sometimes it’s really obvious you trained a padawan.”

He blanched a moment later, waiting for Obi-Wan’s response, but Obi-Wan, who hated being predictable, just gave him a thin sliver of a smile and said, “It’s not exactly gourmet, but it’s hot, at least.”

The contents of the bowl turned out to be greenish-gray protein mush, which tasted faintly of citrus. Since Quinlan had mostly been scavenging for the past few weeks, it was the best thing he’d tasted in days.

Obi-Wan got up, collecting the discarded datapad as he did so, then paused and looked down at it, registering which one it was. His gaze flicked up at Quinlan, one eyebrow arching slightly.

“I’m too tired to yell at you right now,” Quinlan told him.

“It’s not what you think,” Obi-Wan said, then flicked the datapad off with his thumb and set it aside.

“I don’t _think_ anything,” Quinlan said, but just then they were interrupted by the chime of the holoconferencing equipment activating. He put the now empty bowl aside and went to stand in pickup range alongside Obi-Wan, watching as a dozen holograms sprang up in miniature on the display pad. Counting Obi-Wan, most of the High Council was there, except for –

“Where are Adi Gallia and Eeth Koth?” he asked Obi-Wan, lowering his voice.

Obi-Wan glanced at him. “Dead.”

Quinlan winced. He’d heard about Even Piell’s death, but not Eeth’s and Adi’s.

After a few seconds, Tholme’s familiar form shimmered into existence, and Quinlan felt something in his stomach unclench. He hadn’t been Tholme’s padawan for a while now, but some things never completely went away.

He couldn’t help looking at Obi-Wan again. No master, no padawan, no master’s master or padawan’s padawan, not anymore. Yoda was in his lineage, but that was so far distant it hardly counted. Whether or not a Knight’s lineage actually mattered was a topic of great debate in the Order – or at least it had been before they’d gotten more important things to worry about – but Tholme had had very firm ideas on that. Admittedly, they were controversial ideas, but Tholme had never cared about that sort of thing. Attachments were discouraged, but connections kept the Jedi grounded. Not that you could get many other Jedi to admit that.

_“Quinlan,”_ Tholme said. _“You’re well?”_

“I’ve been better, but I’m more or less whole at the moment,” Quinlan said, folding his hands into the sleeves of his borrowed robes. “Sorry for the short notice,” he added to the members of the Council who were present.

They all looked resigned to it, though he could tell a few of them must have been hastily roused from sleep. Through the holograms it was impossible to tell who was present on Coruscant and who was offworld; Quinlan had no idea of the time difference between Telerath and Coruscant, so he didn’t know whether Obi-Wan had called in the middle of the night or the middle of the afternoon.

Obi-Wan squeezed his shoulder, then went to sit down in a folding chair, the conferencing software making it look like he had taken his seat in his council chair. Quinlan hadn’t actually been up in front of the Council since Obi-Wan had been appointed, so it was more jarring than he had expected to see him there, the double-image of the holoconferencing software and Obi-Wan himself confusing him for an instant. He must have been more tired than he’d thought. 

Windu leaned forward in his seat. _“Master Vos. It’s good to see you again. When you didn’t check in, we expected the worst.”_

“You and me both, Master,” Quinlan said. He paused, collecting his thoughts, and finally said, “My cover on the Wheel got blown. Khaleen – one of my contacts – warned me before the battle droids started kicking down my door, but they were already all over the place. Dooku sent one of his Jedi-killers after me, Darth Vader –”

He stopped as Obi-Wan made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a growl, his hands folding into fists. The masters seated nearest to him looked around at him, disapproving and worried. Tholme, standing by Adi Gallia’s empty chair, made a movement like he was about to go over to him before remembering that Obi-Wan wasn’t actually there. Quinlan stared at him, wondering why in blazes the Council had let him off Coruscant when it was obvious he was hanging on by a thread. A fraying thread.

That alone wouldn’t send a Jedi Knight – a Jedi Master, he might as well give Obi-Wan his due – to the Dark Side, but if the High Council didn’t recognize that was a possibility then they were all idiots. Obi-Wan had gone from calm to so brilliantly, scintillatingly angry within seconds that Quinlan’s head was ringing from the strength of his fury and grief.

Sometimes it wasn’t hard to remember that Dooku was in Obi-Wan’s lineage too, not just Qui-Gon and Yoda.

_“Quinlan,”_ Plo Koon said, getting his attention, and Quinlan dragged his mind away from Obi-Wan and back to the present.

He continued his report, feeling Obi-Wan settle slowly in the Force, though his agitation ratcheted upwards every time Quinlan said Darth Vader’s name. It made it hard to concentrate, but Quinlan had given reports half-dead, high on painkillers, drunk, drugged, and hungover, and sometimes all of them at once, so Obi-Wan’s psychic distress wasn’t the worst distraction he’d had before.

“I sent Khaleen on to Coruscant with half the datachips,” he finished. “That way, even if I didn’t get through, at least some of the information would get to the Temple. Did she –”

Tholme gave him a knowing look, but said, _“Your friend arrived last week. She’s being looked after now.”_ He considered Quinlan thoughtfully. _“She’s been very worried about you.”_

Obi-Wan’s gaze flicked to Quinlan, one eyebrow arching up in faint amusement.

“That’s good,” Quinlan said, hoping that his relief didn’t show too clearly on his face. He’d hated having to leave Khaleen, but as far as they’d been able to determine neither Black Sun nor the Separatists cared about her, just him. She was safer on her own that she had been with him.

Obi-Wan said, “I can’t spare a ship to get you to Coruscant right now. Maybe in a day or so, but right now even a shuttle isn’t going to make it through the Separatist blockade. A small ship or a starfighter will just get their attention, let them know we’re trying to get someone or something important out.”

_“Can you transmit the information?”_ Ki-Adi-Mundi asked.

_“That wouldn’t be wise,”_ Tholme said. _“We know our communications channels are compromised and we haven’t managed to find the leak yet. Intel this sensitive shouldn’t be trusted to the HoloNet.”_

“I agree,” Quinlan said. “If I’d felt comfortable transmitting it, I would have done that already.”

Yoda and Windu glanced at each other, then Windu said, _“Stay with Obi-Wan for now, Master Vos. The situation on Telerath should stabilize soon.”_

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes at that, but said, “I could use the company.”

A few of the other masters threw uneasy glances towards him at this, but Obi-Wan didn’t look at them, apparently meaning it in earnest.

Quinlan dropped his gaze. _Of course he’s lonely. He’s never been on his own for long; he was with Qui-Gon, then with Skywalker, even after Skywalker was knighted._ Jedi almost never went immediately from being padawans themselves to taking their own padawans; it happened from time to time – Obi-Wan had been the only one to do so in living memory of anyone save Yoda and T’ra Saa – but it was very rare. The current school of thought in the Temple was that doing so fostered attachment, which had been the subject of several of Tholme’s angry rants over the past few years. Quinlan still wasn’t sure why the Council had permitted Obi-Wan to take a padawan so soon after his own knighthood, except that they had probably thought either or both of them would wash out.

_“Then it’s settled,”_ Windu said. _“We’ll be in contact. May the Force be with you, Master Vos.”_

Quinlan bowed, murmuring the appropriate response.

As the holographic images of the councilors began to blink out, Obi-Wan got to his feet, rolling his shoulders as his back popped audibly. Quinlan grabbed him by the arm and pulled him close. “What the hell was that?”

“What?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play stupid with me, Obi-Wan, we’ve known each other too long for that.”

Obi-Wan turned towards him, blue eyes glinting in the tent’s artificial light. “Darth Vader killed Anakin,” he said, his voice very calm. “If I get the chance, I’m going to rip out his heart and feed it to him.”

Quinlan stared at him in stunned horror. It took him a moment before he could get himself back together, his fingers digging into Obi-Wan’s arm as he said, “Are you out of your Force-damned mind?”

“That remains to be seen,” Obi-Wan said. “Maybe more literally than you meant.”

Quinlan dragged him closer. “You’re a Jedi Knight, Obi-Wan!”

“I don’t care!” Obi-Wan spat.

“Yeah, you do, or you would have gone rogue already.” He could feel Obi-Wan in the Force, his fury – at Vader, at Dooku, at the Council and the Order – tangled up with his terrible grief and the thin threads of hope and fear wound through it all. “Maybe you fooled the Council enough to get assigned out here –”

“Do you _really_ think this is my first deployment since Odryn, Quin?” Obi-Wan demanded; Odryn must have been the engagement where Skywalker had died. “It’s my fifth. We weren’t even back on Coruscant for a week before they sent us out again.”

Quinlan was stunned into silence.

“You haven’t been here,” Obi-Wan said, his voice smoothing out as though it hadn’t been filled with ugly rage a few moments earlier. “We need every Knight on the front lines. The Council couldn’t afford to lock me up in the Temple for the next year and hope I got over the backlash. It wasn’t that bad, anyway.”

“You and I both know the backlash isn’t the problem,” Quinlan said. It was a problem, sure, but Obi-Wan was functional and coherent and could still use the Force, none of which were a given when it came to backlash.

Even after millennia, no one really knew how psychic backlash worked. Records in the Jedi Archives said that Jedi – and Sith, for that matter – had been driven mad and even killed when the Force backfired on them. Other Jedi had had their ability to use the Force permanently burned out of them, which usually drove them mad anyway. The prevalent theory about Depa Billaba’s coma was that it was a result of the backlash from turning on Mace Windu on Haruun Kal, but no one knew for sure.

“Quin, I had to go back to the front with an arm that was still broken in three places because there wasn’t enough time for it to heal properly at the Temple,” Obi-Wan said. “I’m _fine_.”

“Like hell you are. Vengeance isn’t going to get you anything but dead, Obi-Wan –”

“I don’t care.”

“– or worse,” Quinlan finished, then registered what Obi-Wan had said. He felt his grip tighten on Obi-Wan’s arm, fingers digging into the flesh beneath. It took him a moment to force his voice to enough steadiness to say, “You might not care about yourself, but you damned well care about your troopers and you still care enough about the Order and the Republic that you’re here. If you didn’t –”

“Anakin wouldn’t forgive me if I got his men killed,” Obi-Wan said, his voice surprisingly even.

“You think he’d forgive you if you got yourself killed?”

“I think he’d do exactly the same thing if our places were reversed,” Obi-Wan said.

Quinlan knew Anakin Skywalker well enough to acknowledge that that was probably true, but he’d thought better of Obi-Wan. “And that wasn’t your first hint that you might be doing something wrong?”

Obi-Wan glared at him. “Let go of me, Quin. I’m not about to go running off screaming into the night. I haven’t done so yet and I’m not about to start now.”

“Were you sleeping with him?”

“What?” He’d finally managed to take Obi-Wan by surprise. His mouth worked silently for a moment, then he said, “No, Quin, I wasn’t fucking my partner. Anakin used to be my padawan, for love of the Force!”

“So? Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Obi-Wan gave him an irritated look. “Were you hoping the answer was going to be yes or no?”

“I don’t know,” Quinlan told him. “‘Yes’ might have explained a few things.”

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

Someone cleared their throat behind them, and both Obi-Wan and Quinlan swung around to see who it was, Obi-Wan finally pulling his arm free of Quinlan’s grip. Tholme’s hologram was still there, grown to life-size now that the rest of the Jedi had gone.

_“Can I have a moment with Quinlan, Obi-Wan?”_

“Of course.” Obi-Wan’s voice was calm. “I’ll be in the command tent with Commander Cody and Captain Rex,” he added to Quinlan. “Try and get some sleep. I’ll send someone for you if something happens.”

“This isn’t over, Kenobi,” Quinlan told his retreating back, and Obi-Wan made a dismissive gesture at him before picking up his cloak and leaving the tent.

Quinlan looked back at Tholme, who was frowning a little. “Did you hear all that?”

_“Yes.”_ Tholme folded his hands into the sleeves of his cloak. _“It’s not exactly news.”_

“And the Council’s just going to let him – he’s going to get himself killed.”

_“Don’t worry about Obi-Wan.”_

“He’s my best friend,” Quinlan snapped. “And no one else seems to care that he’s falling apart at the seams.”

Tholme shut his eyes, letting his breath out in a sigh. _“Has Obi-Wan told you what happened on Odryn yet?”_

“No. One of his troopers gave me the story.”

_“Tell me if he does.”_

“Why?” Quinlan said warily.

_“Because when he finally reported to the Council after the 212th and the 501st got back to Coruscant, he claimed he didn’t remember what happened. He was also out of his head on painkillers, so he might have actually been telling the truth.”_

Quinlan raised his eyebrows. “You think he was lying?”

_“No. But my opinion’s not the one that matters.”_ Tholme rubbed a hand over his jaw. _“If Obi-Wan goes rogue, he goes rogue. If he does, at least we know where he’s going.”_

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Tholme gave him a meaningful look. _“Obi-Wan wants to kill Darth Vader. There are no few people in the Order who are of a mind to let him.”_

Quinlan swore, pacing back and forth in the tent before finally going over to drop to a seat in Obi-Wan’s abandoned chair. He’d lost enough friends to this war; he didn’t want to lose Obi-Wan too. Especially to the Dark Side.

Tholme came over to him, close enough that if he had hadn’t been a hologram Quinlan could have reached out and touched him. _“I know you’re worried about Obi-Wan, Quinlan,”_ he said. _“You aren’t the only one. But there’s nothing that can be done for him now. Under other circumstances the Order would be able to pull him back front the front and confine him to the Temple, but as it is –”_ He shook his head. _“He’s right. We need every Knight on the battlefield, especially the ones who are as good at it as Obi-Wan is.”_

“And if he dies out here?”

_“That was a risk even before Skywalker was killed.”_ Tholme crossed his arms. _“You might as well worry about yourself too, not just Obi-Wan. Dooku’s people will follow you to Telerath.”_

“I know,” Quinlan grimaced. “Can’t say I don’t feel better about the fact I’ve got an army between me and them, though. And another Jedi, even if he is –” He hesitated, not wanting to say _apparently going insane_.

_“You should probably be aware that Dooku has a capture alive order out on Obi-Wan,”_ Tholme added helpfully.

“I know.” He folded his hands together into fists and rested his chin on them, staring through Tholme at the tan-colored wall of the tent behind him. “But Obi-Wan isn’t what you wanted to talk to me about, is it?”

_“No.”_ Tholme sighed, then settled himself in one of the abandoned Council chairs, leaning his cane against the arm. _“You aren’t the only shadow whose cover was blown in the past five weeks.”_

Quinlan frowned. “How many others?”

_“All of them.”_

“Aayla –”

_“Is with her troops. She’s fine.”_

Quinlan let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. “The others?”

_“They’re either dead or missing. You’re the only one who’s checked in.”_

Quinlan stared at him, unable and unwilling to believe his ears. “What?”

Tholme’s face was grim. _“All of the other shadows are dead,”_ he repeated. _“A few haven’t been accounted for, but what we have been able to discover about their last whereabouts suggests that they were either killed or captured.”_

“Shylar too?”

The words slipped out before he could help himself. He and Shylar hadn’t been anything for a long time now, but he had to know. If it had been Obi-Wan or Luminara, he would have asked too.

Tholme’s expression was sympathetic but about as unyielding as granite. _“Master Shylar is dead too, Quinlan. I’m sorry. As far as my agents have been able to tell, she was captured by Dooku and tortured to death.”_

Quinlan slammed a fist down onto his knee, the only display of emotion that he allowed himself. “How did he know?” he asked. “How did so many shadows get burned so fast? I thought only you and the High Council knew who all of them were.”

_“Not even the entire High Council,”_ Tholme said. _“Windu and Yoda know – knew – and that’s it. A few of the others knew individual Knights, but no one else knew the entire list. That information wasn’t in any of the databases; an ordinary slicer couldn’t have found it.”_ He scratched at the scar on his face. _“Mace tells me that the Supreme Chancellor’s been making noises about getting access to Jedi records, but they’ve been able to put him off so far. Even if he had gotten them – if it was someone in the Executive Office or the Special Operations Bureau – they shouldn’t have been able to go down the entire list and burn each and every shadow in the Jedi Order.”_

He was quiet for a moment, while Quinlan tried to wrap his head around the enormity of what had happened. He’d assumed that his cover being blown was a freak accident; either he’d slipped up somehow or something, somewhere, had fallen into the wrong hands. But every shadow Knight in the Order, the entirety of the active Jedi intelligence community – it should have been impossible. It _was_ impossible. Even if there was a traitor in the Order, another Dooku biding his time, that information simply wasn’t accessible. Too much of it only existed inside Tholme’s head, and if he had been the traitor, he could have done much more damage than simply burning all of his shadow Knights.

_“Quinlan,”_ he said, and Quinlan glanced up at him.

“Master?”

_“I’m very glad that you’re alive,”_ Tholme said.

The gentleness in his voice, the rough sincerity, was unexpected for some reason. Tholme knew all the Jedi shadows, had handpicked them and trained them and ran them on their missions, but Quinlan was the only one who had ever been his padawan.

There had been a few times over the years when he had thought he had lost Aayla, when he thought he had lost Tholme. He’d seen Obi-Wan after Qui-Gon had been killed and now in the wake of Skywalker’s death, how the loss had gutted him both times. Quinlan knew that he was very, very lucky: everyone he loved was still alive.

“I’m pretty glad too, master,” he said. “It was touch and go there for a while.”

*

After Tholme signed off, Quinlan prowled thoughtfully around the tent some more, but there really wasn’t anything to see except endless reports and holomaps. Under normal circumstances Quinlan probably would have found them interesting, but right now he was so tired that he could barely see straight, the long weeks of running finally catching up with him.

_Try and get some sleep_ , Obi-Wan had said, as solicitous as if Quinlan had been his padawan rather than his best friend; usually his advice tended towards, _there’s no way you can make that jump, Quin, you’ll break your neck_ , or, _flirting with the Hutt lord is going to end in disaster, Quinlan_ , or, _Quinlan, don’t. Just don’t_. For once, Quinlan actually felt inclined to listen to him.

He sat down on the edge of the cot, scrubbing his hands over his face, dragging the tie out from his dreads. He wanted a shower and had the vague idea that they were probably available somewhere in the camp, if only because it seemed stupid to shove together several thousand soldiers without taking basic hygiene into account, but had no clue where they were and no desire to get up again now that he had sat down.

Quinlan shoved his bare toes against the cool floor of the tent, then flopped back onto the cot, staring up at the ceiling, watching rain patter down against the synthetic material. The sheets smelled like Obi-Wan, a little; Quinlan could feel the Force-memory of his nightmares hovering at the edges of his perception and pushed it gently aside, knowing that as strong as Obi-Wan was, as tired as Quinlan was now, he stood a good chance of getting lost in it.

He wrapped a blanket around himself, breathing in his best friend’s scent, and felt the Force settle out around him. The Jedi had never been meant to be alone; it was good to be back with his own kind.

*

Quinlan woke up a little while later when Obi-Wan came back, the Force telling him his friend was there even before he heard the tent flap open. He rolled over and opened one eye, seeing Obi-Wan hesitate.

“C’mere.”

“I don’t want to have sex,” Obi-Wan said.

Quinlan opened his other eye. “Good, neither do I, I’m too damn tired. Come here, Kenobi.”

“Your foreplay needs work,” Obi-Wan said, but he shed his cloak and pulled his boots off, dropping his lightsaber beside Quinlan’s on the folding table as he stripped out of the outer layers of his robes.

“If I’m engaging in foreplay, Obi-Wan, you’ll know it,” Quinlan said, watching him. He was too tired to be properly appreciative, still mostly asleep, but Obi-Wan shot him a tired grin anyway.

“I’ve seen your idea of foreplay.”

“Whatever works,” Quinlan said. He reached out and wrapped a hand around Obi-Wan’s wrist, pulling him down onto the cot. “And it does work.”

Obi-Wan came easily, somehow managing to give off an air of being too thin and too fragile despite being nearly solid muscle. “I’m not the best representative sample,” he said, as he and Quinlan arranged themselves on the cot, which really hadn’t been meant for two grown men but could fit them both if they were comfortable with each other. They ended up curled together like two younglings in the crèche, Obi-Wan half on top of him with his knee between Quinlan’s thighs, his head tucked against Quinlan’s shoulder. “You know me: I’m easy.”

“Yeah, you are.” He ruffled Obi-Wan’s hair with one hand, feeling Obi-Wan’s breathing even out. The lumas in the tent turned off with the barest touch of the Force.

The Force wrapped around them, cradling them in a warm, familiar embrace. Quinlan felt Obi-Wan’s Force-presence, jagged with grief and shot through with rage, twine around his. It hurt, a little; Quinlan could understand why the rest of the Council hadn’t wanted him at the Temple, because very few Jedi were equipped to handle that much raw emotion. Obi-Wan himself almost certainly wasn’t.

The edges of it began to dull as Obi-Wan fell asleep. Quinlan rested a hand on the back of his shoulderblade, feeling the bone through the skin and the thin fabric of his undershirt. The sharp spikes of Quinlan’s own anxiety faded away in the pulse of the Force, the comforting weight of another Jedi Knight against him, and for the first time in what felt like months he let himself relax.

Jedi weren’t meant to be alone. Everything was always better with two of them.


	2. Chapter 2

Obi-Wan was still sleeping like the dead when Quinlan woke up the next time. Thin morning sunlight was beginning to filter through the walls of the tent in odd streaks, painting Obi-Wan’s gingery hair golden, so that Quinlan almost missed the flecks of gray in it that he hadn’t noticed last night and which hadn’t been there the last time he had seen Obi-Wan.

“Hey,” Quinlan muttered, pushing at Obi-Wan’s shoulder, and Obi-Wan made a distracted noise in the back of his throat and rolled onto his side so that Quinlan could get out from under him. He was still asleep, calm and still in the Force; Quinlan had the distinct impression that this was the first decent night of sleep he had gotten in a long time. Probably the first since Skywalker had died.

Obi-Wan rolled back onto his stomach, burying his face in the pillow. Quinlan put the rest of his borrowed robes on, checking to see if his boots had dried out – they had – before pulling them on. He clipped his lightsaber to his belt and picked up a cloak, eyeing Obi-Wan’s sleeping form thoughtfully.

The day had dawned bright and clear, with a chill coming in off the saltwater sea that made Quinlan glad for the warm folds of the cloak. Telerath was an Inner Rim world that should have been as far from the front as it was possible to get without entering the Core, but somehow the war had come here too. Compared to other water worlds like Naboo or Rodia, Telerath had relatively little landmass; rather than continents it had clusters of archipelagos dotted around the planet. In the days of the Old Republic it had been a nice resort world, but time had worn it down to nothing more than a backwater that by rights should have been passed over by the war. Force alone only knew what Dooku wanted with it; Quinlan couldn’t think of any important resources the planet boasted aside from water, but presumably there had to be something.

At this hour there were far more clone troopers up and about than there had been last night. Most of them were eyeing Quinlan curiously, apparently already having been informed of Quinlan’s arrival by a rumor mill undoubtedly as vicious as the one in the Jedi Order. Quinlan eyed them back – he hadn’t had much to do with clones before now – then squared his shoulders and went to find out where the latrines and showers were.

When he finally emerged, feeling distinctly more civilized than he had become accustomed to over the course of the past few weeks, he was greeted by Commander Cody and a knot of other clone troopers, some of whom had yellow markings on their armor, others blue.

“General Vos,” Cody introduced him, then started pointing out the other officers. “Captain Rex, ARC trooper Fives, Lieutenant Tango –”

Quinlan looked at the slew of identical faces that differed only in tattoos and scars, marking out each one in his mind and trying to commit each Force-presence to memory. Most of them were eyeing him with wary suspicion; the only ones Quinlan had met before were Cody and the medic Kix. The ones with the blue markings seemed a little more suspicious than the others; Quinlan got the faint impression in the Force that they had been burned by unfamiliar Jedi before. Maybe they were wondering if he was here to replace Obi-Wan or just Skywalker.

This suspicion was borne out when Captain Rex, whose helmet had blue jaig eyes painted over the T-slit, asked, “Where’s General Kenobi, sir?” He managed to sound like he wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Quinlan had murdered him and dumped the remains off the nearest pier.

“Still sleeping, probably,” Quinlan said, determined not to rise to the bait. “He looked like he needed it.”

This got him another round of suspicious glares, which Quinlan took to mean that Obi-Wan hadn’t been sleeping well since Skywalker’s death and this unlikely assertion was yet more proof of Quinlan’s guilt. He bit his lip on the urge to defend himself further, since he’d told them the exact truth, and was glad when Obi-Wan chose this moment to emerge from his tent.

“Quin, you’re still here,” he said, nodding a greeting to the clones.

Quinlan shrugged. “Nowhere else to go at the moment,” he pointed out.

“You’re very resourceful,” Obi-Wan said, raising one eyebrow. “I’m sure you could have come up with something if you really put your mind to it.”

“You’re right,” Quinlan told him, grinning. “I could have stolen your starfighter.”

“You could have tried,” Obi-Wan said. “My astromech’s pretty feisty.” The corner of his mouth lifted slightly in something that Quinlan was willing, for the moment, to call a small smile. “I think he could take you.”

“I have got to meet this droid,” Quinlan said.

“You could always try and steal my starfighter.”

“I don’t know, sir,” said one of the blue-marked clones. “I thought we needed every Jedi in this war, but if you really want to get rid of him –”

“I think I can take one astromech droid,” Quinlan said.

“And that’s how I know you haven’t met Artoo yet,” Obi-Wan said easily. He felt calmer in the Force than he had the previous night, which might have to do with actually sleeping for once, or maybe just with the fact he hadn’t been abruptly woken up.

For a moment Quinlan felt the phantom memory of the Force wrapping cold and cruel around his throat, tossing him effortlessly aside, and wondered what it meant that Obi-Wan’s first instinct had been to lash out, to turn the Force into a weapon.

“Master Vos will be joining us for the time being,” Obi-Wan was saying to the clones.

“For how long?” said Captain Rex, eyeing Quinlan doubtfully.

Obi-Wan’s mouth quirked slightly, as though he had guessed at the tenor of their thoughts. “At the moment, until he can return to Coruscant. The current situation makes that untenable.” He waited for a reaction; when one wasn’t forthcoming, he said, “And how did our friends pass the night?”

Commander Cody and Captain Rex began to give their reports on the movements of the Separatist forces as they walked towards what Quinlan hoped was the mess tent. Obi-Wan listened intently, obviously understanding most of what they were saying; Quinlan tried, but he didn’t know much about the planet, the Separatist forces onworld, or the kind of fighting that most of the Jedi had become accustomed to over the past three years. It was a jarring revelation. He wasn’t used to not knowing anything at _all_ about what the vast majority of Knights of his generation were doing.

“Where were you stationed last, sir?” one of the clones – Quinlan thought it was the ARC trooper, Fives – asked him. He was obviously trying to be friendly, and Quinlan would have appreciated it more if he had a better answer.

“I wasn’t,” he replied. “I’m not that kind of Jedi.”

“Quinlan’s what we call a shadow Jedi,” Obi-Wan said, after a quick mental check with Quinlan to make sure admitting it was all right. Since Quinlan was apparently now the only shadow still left alive, he couldn’t see what harm it could actually do. “His usual assignments are of a more…discreet nature.”

“I’m a spy, not a soldier,” Quinlan said, just in case anyone hadn’t gotten the subtext.

He could sense some relief now that that had been cleared up, along with the kind of suspicion he was used to getting even from other Jedi. No one liked a spook, even when they were on your own side.

Obi-Wan had never had a problem with it. Then again, he and Quinlan had essentially grown up together, so he had spent enough time with Tholme not to see the shadows as anything unusual or abhorrent to the Jedi Code, the way some other Jedi did. He’d even worked shadow operations, mostly during the first few years of his knighthood, when Skywalker had mostly been Temple-bound doing remedial training and Tholme had thought it was a waste to have a trained Knight like Obi-Wan sitting idle around the Temple in the meantime. Obi-Wan didn’t really have the temperament to do it long term, but he was perfectly capable of doing the work on shorter missions; Quinlan knew he had done so a couple of times since the war had begun.

He had no idea what the clones thought about spooks, though he doubted that they had much experience with them. Most of them seemed to be taking their cues from Obi-Wan, who obviously wasn’t bothered by Quinlan’s presence.

He glanced up as Obi-Wan dropped a hand on his arm. “What?”

“Let’s go eat,” Obi-Wan said. “You look like you could use it.”

Quinlan grinned. “Now you sound like Dex.”

*

After they finished eating in a mess tent filled with curious clones, they ended up in the command tent with Commander Cody and Captain Rex, who seemed to be the two highest ranking troopers in the battalion. There were more clones seated at consoles around the perimeter of the tent; Quinlan could only guess at what they were doing.

Holodisplays showed views of the system, the planet, and various landmasses. Obi-Wan strode the big holotable in the center of the tent, turning it on with a flick of his fingers and a twist of the Force.

“We’re here,” he said, presumably for Quinlan’s benefit, since the two clone officers had to know this already. He pointed out the island where the Republic camp was located on the display, which showed several hundred kilometers of territory that was mostly empty ocean punctuated by island chains. “There are settlements on these islands here, here, and here –”

“I came in through that spaceport,” Quinlan said, pointing, and he nodded.

“Separatist forces made planetfall here seven days ago.” He indicated an archipelago one hundred and fifty kilometers north of their current position. “This is the territory they controlled by the time we arrived two days later – we were supposed to go back to Coruscant after we finished up on Cato Neimodia, but High Command routed us here after the system was taken.” He swept a hand through the display, red staining the indicated territory. “Telerath doesn’t have a planetary defense force, but the settlements are too spread out to be taken in one sweep; the Seppies had to take each one on its own. They hadn’t gotten anywhere near finished when we arrived.”

He paused to take a breath. “Fortunately it doesn’t seem like they planned to do much submarine fighting, because their submariner forces have so far been negligible. Telerath doesn’t have an extant native sentient species; the settlers are mostly human and near-human, Galactic standard.”

“Seems like it’d be a nice place for a Nautolan or Mon Cal colony,” Quinlan said, studying the holodisplay.

“You’d think. Kit probably would have gotten the assignment then, since unlike me he can breathe underwater without drowning. Of course, he’s still tied up on Zaadja.” Obi-Wan touched the display again, the red area shrinking. “This is the area the Confederacy currently controls. We think the command element is on one of these two islands, but all our scout drones have been shot down and our air support is busy with the space battle. Right now all we have is one squadron of clone fighters, a few scout fighters, me, and the gunships. No bombers. They were all destroyed at Jebble and we haven’t gotten replacements yet.”

Quinlan slid a sideways glance at this matter of fact observation, wondering if he was expected to contribute. “You said the Seps were moving last night.”

“They’re starting to pull their forces off the eastern islands in this chain,” Obi-Wan said, pointing. “My suspicion is that that they’re going to leave that chain entirely and circle around the command element, hunker down and wait for reinforcements to arrive.”

“Do you have any idea why they’re here at all? Telerath isn’t exactly a hotbed of natural resources, and it’s not strategically important either.”

Obi-Wan smiled. It wasn’t entirely a pleasant expression. “I was planning on asking the command element that.”

“But first we have to find them,” Captain Rex said.

“Yes, there is that.” Obi-Wan frowned down at the holodisplay. “I don’t want to give the Seps the idea that they can move their forces and we won’t retaliate. I want –” He paused, looking at Quinlan.

Quinlan met his gaze. “What?”

“Putting another Jedi on the battlefield could mean the difference between keeping or losing this planet,” Obi-Wan said slowly. “But I know you haven’t exactly had an easy time of it these past few weeks, and this isn’t what you’re used to –”

“Hey,” Quinlan said. “It’s my Republic too. I can swing a lightsaber as well as the next Jedi.”

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow, the Force lightening a little with his amusement. “I am the next Jedi.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You haven’t beaten me in a duel since we were seventeen.”

Quinlan spread his hands. “Hey, not all of us can be Sith-killing prodigies.”

Obi-Wan’s slight grin slid away, his good humor vanishing, but all he said was, “No. We can’t.”

“What in blazes does that mean?”

Obi-Wan didn’t respond, his attention back on the holodisplay. Baffled, Quinlan looked around at Cody and Rex for an explanation, but the two clones looked equally surprised by Obi-Wan’s reaction. He’d gotten his Knighthood by the very old tradition of defeating a Sith lord in single combat; the sheer novelty had made it impossible for him to be sensitive about the circumstances, though he had never advertised it.

“I want to take this chain today,” Obi-Wan said as if they hadn’t spoken, tapping a finger into the center of the hologram. “We can get tanks on the ground here and here. Strangler and Dazzler Companies to launch an assault from this beach with our submersibles, Shadow Squad moving in from above to knock out the gun emplacements.” He indicated each location, both clones making notes on their datapads. “Captain Rex and I will move in from the south with Torrent Company, and Commander Cody and Quinlan from –” He stopped abruptly, blinking at the holomap. From the expression on his face, Quinlan didn’t think it was Telerath he was seeing.

“Obi-Wan?” he said cautiously.

Obi-Wan didn’t answer, his gaze fixed on the map. Abruptly, he pushed away from the holotable and walked out of the tent, his cloak flaring behind him.

Quinlan started to go after him, then paused and looked at the clones, hoping that one of them had an explanation. Rex said quietly, “That’s how General Skywalker died.”

*

Quinlan found Obi-Wan a little ways away, sitting on a crate with his head in his hands. He didn’t look up as Quinlan approached, but his attention sharpened a little in the Force; he hadn’t been caught unawares.

Quinlan sat down beside him. “Obi-Wan.”

“I’m fine.”

He let his disbelief filter into the Force, glad that he didn’t have to find the words to point out why Obi-Wan was being criminally stupid on that subject. Obi-Wan huffed out something that was probably supposed to be a laugh and came out more like a sob.

“It’s not a bad plan,” Obi-Wan said at last. “I just can’t do it. Not again.”

“Forget the plan,” Quinlan said. “We can sort that out later. Just…talk to me, Obi-Wan.”

Obi-Wan was old school in the worst kind of way, the way Qui-Gon and Dooku before him had been old school, because Qui-Gon had learned from Dooku and Dooku had learned from Yoda, and while that approach had its points, Quinlan had found out during his own mastership that it also had its flaws. As far as he was concerned, it had more flaws than points, but good luck explaining that to someone trained in it.

“What’s there to say?” Obi-Wan said bleakly. “Anakin is dead. He – there are moments, sometimes, where I forget what happened, where I can still feel him in the Force. And I think –” He shook his head. “I don’t know what I think. I felt him die, or I think I felt him die, but…I only remember about a tenth of what actually happened on Odryn, less during the actual fighting. The mind-healers at the Temple said that it’s probably a result of the backlash, that I might never get the memories back. He could have been there, Quin. He could have –” He scrubbed his hands over his face, back through his hair. “I think I’d know if he was alive. But I think I’d know if he was dead, too, and I’m just not certain right now. But how can you not be certain about something like that?”

“You think Skywalker’s alive?” Quinlan said slowly.

“I don’t blasted know what I think,” Obi-Wan said. “I don’t even know if I want him to be dead or if I want him to be alive, because if he’s alive, that means that I left him there. I left him –” He caught his breath. “I wasn’t even the one who gave the exfil order. I couldn’t have been.”

“Because of Skywalker?”

Obi-Wan sighed. “Because I was busy almost getting killed by Darth Vader. I wouldn’t have gotten off Odryn alive if it hadn’t been for Rex and Cody. Sometimes I wish –” He stopped, shaking his head.

Quinlan reached over to push Obi-Wan’s hair back from his face, revealing the faded white scar that ran from forehead to ear. Jedi healing could do a lot, but it couldn’t get rid of scars entirely unless it was administered immediately, and from all accounts Obi-Wan hadn’t gotten to the healers quickly enough and had been too distracted to do it himself. “That from Vader?” he asked quietly.

Obi-Wan knocked his hand aside. “No. When Anakin died, the backlash made me black out and I fell off the tank I was standing on, which happened to be moving at the time. Apparently I bounced off the side of the tank _and_ the swoop next to it before I finally hit the ground. Vader broke my arm in three places and almost took my head off, but that was later.”

Quinlan hissed in a breath. He had been lucky enough not to get close enough to cross lightsabers with Vader, but it had been a near thing. As far as he knew, none of the other Jedi who had gone up against him had lived; Obi-Wan had to be the only one to do so and survive.

Obi-Wan ran his hands over his face again. “I want Anakin to be alive more than anything else in the galaxy and I hate myself for it, Quin. I’m a Jedi Knight. I shouldn’t feel that way about anything. Anyone.”

“Obi-Wan –”

His bitterness filtered into the Force. “If you’re going to give me the speech about attachment, you can save your breath. I’ve already gotten it from Yoda, not to mention half the other masters on the Council. Force save me, I’ve _given_ that speech more times than I can count.”

“I wasn’t going to give you the attachment speech, Obi-Wan,” Quinlan said gently. “You know how I feel about that.”

“Even Tholme admits there’s a difference between attachments and connections,” Obi-Wan said tiredly. He rested his elbows on his thighs, his hands hanging loose between his knees. “I’ve heard that speech too.” He shut his eyes. “Do you – never mind.”

“What?”

Obi-Wan glanced aside. “It’s nothing.”

Quinlan reached out and tapped a finger against Obi-Wan’s jaw, making him look back at him. “Hey. Your padawan died. That’s not nothing.”

“Former padawan.”

“Still your padawan. Getting Knighted doesn’t change that. Our padawans are still our padawans even when they’re masters themselves. They always will be.”

“And if they’re dead?” Obi-Wan said through his teeth. “If they trusted us to bring them safe into the future and we failed them when they needed us the most? By the Force, Quin, Anakin was alone when he died; I wasn’t even – I couldn’t –” He choked the words off, swiping a hand quickly over his face, but not before Quinlan saw the gleam of tears in his eyes.

“Hey, Obi-Wan, hey –” He slung an arm around Obi-Wan’s shoulders and pulled him close. Obi-Wan resisted for a moment, then let himself be drawn in, pressing his face against Quinlan’s chest like a youngling. He was shaking beneath Quinlan’s palm, a fine tremor echoed in the Force that made Quinlan’s nerves itch. Quinlan curved his other hand over the back of Obi-Wan’s head, letting comfort roll into the Force, the way he’d done with Aayla when she had had nightmares as a padawan.

Obi-Wan wept so quietly that Quinlan wasn’t even sure he was crying until he felt the tears soak through the layers of his robes to his skin. Obi-Wan did everything quietly, had done so even as a youngling; it went to reason that he was losing his mind quietly as well. His grief was so strong, so overwhelming in the Force that Quinlan couldn’t have sensed anything else if his life had depended on it. He could feel Obi-Wan’s shame and rage tangled up in it, but it was grief that Obi-Wan was choking on.

It could have been him. It could still be him, because Aayla was out there somewhere fighting, and Jedi died every day in this war. What had happened to Skywalker wasn’t extraordinary; Obi-Wan’s grief wasn’t special. It only felt that way because he was Quinlan’s friend. That didn’t make it any less terrible.

They sat there until Obi-Wan had cried himself hoarse, clutching at Quinlan like a drowning man. Quinlan glanced up once, relieved to find that all the clones nearby had removed themselves to the furthest distance possible and were studiously looking in the opposite direction.

Obi-Wan stayed where he was. He was still shaking slightly from the force of his emotions, his hands folded into the front of Quinlan’s borrowed cloak. Quinlan patted his head gently, the way he would have done with an upset youngling, even though it had been literally years since the last time he had actually interacted with any Jedi younglings. Some things you didn’t forget.

After a few minutes, Obi-Wan slowly uncurled, hissing out a breath as his back popped. There were lines on his face from the folds of Quinlan’s robes, his eyes red; he glanced at Quinlan and then ran a hand over his face.

“Aayla’s on Boz Pity,” he said, his voice raw. “You can talk to her later if comms are working.”

“You have got to stop reading my mind, Obi-Wan,” Quinlan said gently.

“I didn’t. I know you. And I know what I’d want to do if –” Obi-Wan stopped abruptly, then scrubbed his hands over his face again. “Quinlan…”

“You don’t need to say anything, you might strain something,” Quinlan said. He patted Obi-Wan on the shoulder, trying to think of something to say that Obi-Wan probably hadn’t already heard and ignored.

Obi-Wan put his elbows on his knees and his hands in his hair, hiding his face. “Cody and Rex probably already made the blasted assault plan,” he said. “It wouldn’t be the first time. I just hope they remembered that they have two Jedi to account for again instead of just one.”

“Are you still planning to fight today?” Quinlan asked him, surprised.

“Was I supposed to be reconsidering it? There’s a war on.”

Quinlan could hardly have forgotten, but before he could say anything Commander Cody came around the corner of the nearest tent and said, “General Kenobi, General Vos? We’ve finished the assault plan.”

*

The less said about the fighting, the better.

It was dirty, miserable work, but by mid-afternoon they had taken the western island chain and by nightfall Quinlan and Obi-Wan, along with the majority of the clones, were back at the GAR base. They had left a company behind to root out any remaining battle droids and sort through what was left of the Separatist camp in search of anything useful, but Obi-Wan hadn’t been particularly hopeful on those grounds.

Quinlan wanted a shower and a drink and possibly a lobotomy, but in lieu of the latter two he settled for the former. Fighting battle droids wasn’t particularly difficult work for a Jedi Knight, even a couple dozen of them, but it had been hundreds over the course of almost ten hours, inch by hard-fought inch of land. Scrapped battle droids didn’t reverberate in the Force, but dying clones did, and Quinlan’s nerves were scraped raw and bare as a result. He didn’t know if Obi-Wan felt the same way or not; Obi-Wan had vanished almost as soon as they had gotten back to the base, barely stopping to shower the mud and blood off first.

Quinlan had always taken the dire pronouncement that the war was destroying the Jedi as hyperbole from the more conservative factions in the Order, but now he realized where it came from, because it _felt_ true, like everything that made the Jedi the Jedi had been stripped away until there was nothing left but the steel core of the weapons they had become. The Jedi had always been weapons, but they were supposed to be something else too – never just one thing. The war had changed that.

He emerged from the showers to find a clone with yellow chevrons painted on his armor waiting for him. “General Vos? There’s a holocommunication for you from Boz Pity.”

Aayla.

He had to be shown where the communications tent was, and when he walked in it was to find Obi-Wan sitting backwards on a folding chair and talking to Aayla. They both looked up as he came in, Aayla smiling in relief that Quinlan could feel echoed faintly in the Force across the light years between them.

“Nice of you to join us, Quin,” Obi-Wan said, getting to his feet. “I’ll leave you two to it. Master Secura, always a pleasure.”

She bowed to him. _“Be well, Master Obi-Wan,”_ she said.

Obi-Wan’s mouth quirked slightly, but he didn’t say anything else before he left.

Quinlan took his discarded chair, resisting the urge to just stare at Aayla as he settled down. “It’s good to see you again.”

_“You too, Master Quin. When Master Tholme told me about the other shadows…”_ She let the words trail off, watching him from the slight pedestal of the holoprojector.

Quinlan had only been a Knight for a year when he had taken a padawan, younger than Aayla was now. He’d been the first Knight of their generation to take a padawan – the first to pass the Trials, the first to take a padawan, the first to make master, now years past. Maybe he had been too young, but it had worked out, and now Aayla was a Knight herself.

_A live Knight._

He winced at the thought, but it was true. Obi-Wan’s and Kit’s former padawans were dead, Luminara’s was a disgraced traitor, Stass had never taken one, and the other Knights of their generation were all dead along with their padawans. Aayla was the only one left.

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” he told her.

She smiled a little. _“It was too late for that about fifteen years ago, Master.”_

Quinlan grinned at her. “You might have a point.”

They only managed to talk for about twenty minutes, at which point the Separatist signal jammers started acting up again and Aayla’s image dissolved into static. Quinlan sat back in his chair, rubbing a hand over his face and hoping there wasn’t anything more sinister at play. He waited around a couple of minutes to see if the techs could reestablish the connection, then went to eat and find Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan wasn’t in the mess tent, but Captain Rex and a cluster of clone troopers from what had previously been the 501st were. Rex eyed Quinlan thoughtfully, then invited him over to join them, to the obvious consternation of his companions. Most of them were wary of Quinlan – he could sense them still wondering if he was here to replace Obi-Wan – but his participation in the fighting today had apparently bought him brownie points.

Despite that, their company was more pleasant than Quinlan had expected; he realized that without much interaction with clones, he had formed the opinion of the clone troopers as something like a single monolith, not much different from the Confederacy’s battle droids. It was startling to realize that that wasn’t anywhere near true, and he left the mess feeling slightly unsettled.

It had begun raining again, a thin drizzle that damped Quinlan’s hair before he flipped up the hood of his cloak, and he lengthened his stride to make it to Obi-Wan’s tent before it became a downpour.

Inside, Obi-Wan standing at the center of a vast sphere of holograms, turning his head occasionally to peer more closely at one or the other. He didn’t look around as Quinlan came in.

Quinlan took off his cloak and hung it up, trying to work out what Obi-Wan was studying. Some of the holograms were starcharts, with systems marked out in red. He saw at least two warship diagrams, something else that looked like the plans for the known Separatist prisons at Lola Sayu and the Stygeon, files marked with the seals of the Jedi Archives, the GAR, and the Senate, HoloNet reports, and a dozen other things that he didn’t recognize immediately. It took him a minute to realize what he was looking at.

“Are you hunting Vader or Skywalker?”

Obi-Wan turned, blinked at him, and then made a gesture into his hands, compressing the holograms into a sphere the size of a marble before they blinked out entirely. The lights came back up in the tent as he took the datacrystal off the projector. “Does it matter?”

“Well, one of them is actually alive,” Quinlan said, crossing his arms over his chest. “There’s a difference between chasing a ghost and seeking revenge.” He paused, then added deliberately, “Both of them will kill you in the end.”

Obi-Wan gave him a long, thoughtful look. His shields were up, sealed so tightly that Quinlan couldn’t even get a hint of what was going through his head right now. After a moment, he said quietly, “I know,” and turned away to set the datacrystal aside. “You did well today.”

“Don’t change the subject, Obi-Wan. I’m not a padawan who can be put off with a compliment.”

Obi-Wan didn’t turn around. “There’s nothing else to say, Quin. Vader’s dangerous, maybe more dangerous than Dooku, and I’m one of the best duelists in the Order. We’re losing the war. One less Separatist general, one less Jedi-killer –” His voice wavered for an instant, then he went on. “If Vader dies, then we’ll have a chance of surviving the war.”

Quinlan turned a chair around and straddled it, resting his forearms on the back. “Is that what you really believe?”

“I know we’re losing the war.” Obi-Wan finally turned around, leaning against the table behind him and crossing his arms over his chest. “The Order is losing Jedi faster than they can be replaced. The younger Knights were knighted too young, and they’re dying because of it. The Council is putting padawans as young as thirteen in the field, and they’re dying because they don’t have the training to survive. Older Knights and masters are dying because they’re not flexible enough to accept that this is not a war that can be won by the Jedi Order that they know. And sometimes they’re just dying because we’re all only mortal and the Force can’t stop every blaster bolt. The Republic is losing territory every day. Shipyards, arms factories, politically prominent systems – all gone, either by the sword or because they’ve gone over to the Confederacy. Or both. The Confederacy can produce new battle droids ten times faster than Kamino can produce new clones and Kamino raises its prices every time the Senate orders a new batch. The Republic’s treasuries are empty. The government is so deep in hock to the Banking Clan it will be centuries before they manage to dig themselves out, if ever. The Jedi are a little better off because we haven’t emptied our own accounts yet, but at this rate we’ll be broke in five years, maybe sooner.”

Quinlan drew in his breath. The Temple treasuries were the result of millennia of investments, donations, and prizes – among several other odd sources of income – and were generally believed to total the worth of several independent systems. To hear that they were being depleted at that rate was almost unimaginable.

Obi-Wan met his gaze, his expression somber. “I don’t know if the Republic can win the war,” he said. “I’d like to think it can, but I just don’t know. Chancellor Palpatine will never sue for peace. He does a fine job of talking it up, but he doesn’t mean it, not really; he likes being in power too much and the war gives him everything he wants. He doesn’t give a damn about the people of the Republic.”

“So get your girlfriend to call for a Vote of No Confidence,” Quinlan said.

“Palpatine has the majo – she’s not my girlfriend!” Obi-Wan gave him a startled look.

“That’s not what I heard.”

“The only person I’m sleeping with right now is you,” Obi-Wan said, irritated.

Quinlan raised an eyebrow. “It’s cute how you think you’re getting lucky tonight, Kenobi. Don’t change the subject.”

“I don’t –” Obi-Wan sighed and pushed a hand back through his hair. “If someone calls for a Vote of No Confidence in Palpatine, it won’t pass. Right now he holds the most impressive majority in the Senate in three centuries and unfortunately he’s not inclined to peace except at the edge of a sword. Oh, he won’t say it; if you ask him, he’ll tell you that he wants nothing more than for the war to end and to see the Republic restored. He’s very good at saying that. Over and over and over again in a dozen different ways. I could parrot some of them at you, if you like. Padmé and her friends have tried to halt spending, the production of clones, have even gone to speak with sympathizers in the Confederacy, but they’ve been rebuffed at every turn, and meanwhile Palpatine gains more and more power every day. If Padmé, Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, or any of their other allies tried to call for a Vote of No Confidence, not only would it not pass, but they’d very likely lose their seats in the Senate. Padmé certainly would; she’s appointed, not elected, and if she’s forced to choose between a senator and the Supreme Chancellor then the Queen of Naboo will be forced to side with Palpatine. Padmé won’t risk that, not yet. The same is true for Senator Mothma, though it’s less personal; Bail could probably manage it because Alderaan can get away with nearly anything, but it won’t have any effect and he’ll lose standing in the Senate.”

“For someone who hates politics, you know an awful lot about them,” Quinlan said.

Obi-Wan grimaced. “It comes with the Council seat. And there aren’t too many people that Padmé and Bail trust enough to talk to about it. I have that dubious honor.”

“And you’re one of the only Knights in the Order whose mind is twisted enough to understand that drek,” Quinlan pointed out.

“Oh, thanks.” Obi-Wan scratched at the scar on his forehead. “You always know exactly what to say to make me feel good about myself.”

“You know me, I try.” Quinlan squinted at him. “Why wouldn’t Palpatine want to end the war? He has to know it’s not sustainable. What does he think is going to happen, anyway? Dooku’s got the Federation, the Techno Union, the Banking Clan, all the commerce guilds – in theory, he can continue infinitely. He’s not going to sue for peace any time soon.”

“I know. Believe me, I know. I can’t decide if Palpatine doesn’t realize that, if he just doesn’t care, or if he’s got something else in mind.” He rubbed his thumb over his beard, his expression thoughtful. “I used to think it was the first, then the second; more and more I lean towards the third. I just can’t decide what it might be. Maybe he doesn’t really want a Galactic Republic anymore.” The corner of his mouth lifted a little in cool amusement. “He certainly won’t have one if he goes on like this. We won’t have much of a Jedi Order either; we’ve already lost half the Order in the past three years.”

“ _Half_?” Quinlan leaned forward, nearly overbalancing the chair. “I knew the casualty numbers were high, but I didn’t think they were _that_ high –”

Obi-Wan met his eyes, his expression sad. “They are.”

Quinlan swore and stood up, pushing away from the chair. He was angry at Dooku, angry at Palpatine, angry at the Council for not finding a way out of this mess, angry at Tholme for not seeing it unfolding before Geonosis, angry at Obi-Wan for telling him, just angry. They were Jedi; they were supposed to prevent things like this from happening, not be left playing catch-up when it was far too late.

Obi-Wan watched him stomp back and forth for a few minutes without speaking, then said, “You should sleep. We’ll probably have another long day tomorrow.”

“You’re not going to tell me to meditate and calm my mind like a good Jedi?” Quinlan said, half-serious.

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow at him. “I can’t meditate anymore; I don’t see how I can tell someone else to in good conscience.” He hesitated, then added, “And I’m the last person you want to talk to about being a good Jedi.” 

*

Obi-Wan left after that to do something mysterious and presumably related to the running of the camp; Quinlan didn’t ask for the details and couldn’t really bring himself to care one way or another. He stormed around the tent for a while trying to calm down and finally ended up sitting on the extra cot that had been brought in while they were out, resting his chin on his interlocked fingers. Belatedly, he realized that Obi-Wan had never answered his original question.

_Blast it, Kenobi, I don’t want to lose another friend to this war._

Except he was fairly certain that he already had. Obi-Wan just hadn’t bothered to stop fighting yet.

He looked up as Obi-Wan came back, shedding his wet cloak. “The perimeter’s secure,” he said, which answered the question of what he had been doing. “Rex and Cody closed up the holes your entry revealed, though there’s not much they can do about another Force-user coming through. Dooku doesn’t exactly have many of those to spare right now, though, and from what I’ve heard Vader doesn’t exactly do subtlety.”

“That’s one way to put it. If Khaleen hadn’t been hanging around the landing bays on the Wheel when he arrived, I’d be so much mincemeat right now.”

Obi-Wan grimaced. He sat down on his own cot to pull off his boots, standing them upright next to a small table with a lamp and a datapad on it. After a moment he unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, turning it over in his hands as he looked down at it.

Quinlan pushed to his feet and crossed to him. “Hey,” he said, and when Obi-Wan looked up, reached down to take the lightsaber from him and set it aside. Quinlan slid a hand into Obi-Wan’s too-long hair and tipped his head back, Obi-Wan starting to smile as Quinlan leaned in.

It was a long, slow kiss, and when Quinlan pulled back the first thing Obi-Wan did was smirk. “I thought you said I wasn’t getting lucky tonight.”

“I guess I changed my mind.” He kissed Obi-Wan again, his hands dropping to his belt, and felt more than heard Obi-Wan make a deep, pleased sound in the back of his throat.

“Lucky me,” Obi-Wan said against his mouth, then pulled him down.

*

Quinlan woke much later to the sound of soft voices. He had his hand on his lightsaber even before he had his eyes open, but there was no distress in the Force for the first time since he’d gotten here; he hadn’t realized how deeply Obi-Wan’s unhappiness had been woven into the Force until it had ceased for a little while.

He rolled over to see Obi-Wan sitting cross-legged on the other cot, a holocomm cupped in the palm of his hand. From here, Quinlan could see that the projected figure was a slim, pretty woman he vaguely recognized from the HoloNet. She was wearing a grey and black gown with belled sleeves and her dark hair was fixed in crescents on either side of her face. This had to be Obi-Wan’s senator.

_“– I’m sorry, Obi-Wan, I thought I’d gotten the time difference right –”_

“It’s all right,” Obi-Wan said. “I don’t mind.” He smiled a little. “I’m surprised that you managed to get through at all; we’ve been having communications problems recently.”

_“That sounds bad.”_

“It isn’t good, but I think we’ll be able to sort it out.” He paused, then said, “I didn’t think you had my personal holocomm frequency. Did you get the Temple to give it to you?”

_“No, the Chancellor gave it to me,”_ said the woman, and at Obi-Wan’s slight frown added, _“Is that a problem?”_

“No,” Obi-Wan said slowly. “It’s just that I didn’t think Palpatine had it either. I would have given it to you if you’d asked; you should have said something before I left Coruscant.”

_“I didn’t think about it then; you left on such short notice.”_ The woman glanced aside, then looked back at Obi-Wan. _“Are you coming back any time soon?”_

“I don’t know. I hope so; my men deserve it. They didn’t get the furlough they were promised after Odryn.” He hesitated. “Is everything all right?”

The woman pleated the fabric of her skirt between her fingers and didn’t say anything.

Obi-Wan leaned forward, his brows narrowing with concern. “I can come back,” he said. “Maybe not right now, but in a few days –”

_“No, you can’t,”_ said the woman.

“There’s another Knight here right now,” Obi-Wan said quietly. “I could.”

_“I know that you can’t,”_ said the woman. _“It’s nothing, Obi-Wan, truly.”_

“It doesn’t sound like nothing.”

_“Obi-Wan, I carry two blasters and I’m surrounded by guards. I’m fine. What’s going to happen in the middle of the Senate Building?”_

Obi-Wan’s mouth quirked slightly, though Quinlan could sense the effort it took him. “I seem to recall hearing that before.”

The woman spread her hands. _“And here we both are to make jokes about it years later.”_

“I just don’t want what happened to Satine to happen to you, Padmé,” Obi-Wan said quietly. “Promise me that if you need my help, you’ll ask for it. Please.”

_“I promise, Obi-Wan. I don’t want to die.”_

Obi-Wan’s alarm sparked in the Force, but all he said was, “Padmé, if you ask, I’ll come back, no matter where I am or what I’m doing. I can’t – I won’t lose anyone else.”

_Damn_ , Quinlan thought. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand why Obi-Wan felt that way, not after what had happened to Qui-Gon, what had happened to Skywalker, the rumors about what had happened to Skywalker’s apprentice and Obi-Wan’s old flame Satine Kryze, but it was a bad thing for a Jedi to feel that way. It was worse for him to admit it, especially to someone who wasn’t a Jedi and couldn’t understand what that confession meant.

Obi-Wan’s gaze flickered towards him, then he lowered his eyes as the woman said, quickly changing the subject, _“Bail might be coming there.”_

“Bail Organa? Why?”

_“Humanitarian aid. He’s trying to make the arrangements now. I was going to join him, but…the Queen doesn’t want me leaving Coruscant for the time being and I don’t want to – well, Bail has it under control, anyway. He’s used to this sort of thing.”_

“We’re still mopping up Separatist forces on Telerath,” Obi-Wan said, frowning. “If he can wait a week or two until the planet is secure –” He stopped mid-sentence, his eyes widening.

_“Obi-Wan?”_

“He’s here.”

“Who’s here?” Quinlan asked, sitting the rest of the way up. The woman looked in his direction, but Quinlan was pretty sure he was out of the holocomm’s visual pickup range, which was good, since he wasn’t wearing anything.

Obi-Wan didn’t answer, but his upper lip skinned back from his teeth in something like a snarl.

_“Obi-Wan, what’s happening?”_ the woman demanded, leaning forward as if she could step out of the holo if she just tried hard enough.

Obi-Wan’s comlink, on the table beside the cot, began to beep urgently. Obi-Wan held up a hand for it, catching it out of the air. “Kenobi.”

_“General? A Separatist fleet has just come out of hyperspace and engaged Republic naval forces. They’re attempting to land troop carriers onplanet now.”_

“Vader,” Obi-Wan spat. “He’s here.”


End file.
